Sandra Binion: Autobiography of Looking
Searching for Emma was first exhibited at Centre d'art contemporain de la Matmut - Daniel Havis in Normandy, France in 2021. It amplifies the artist's multimedia project Distillé, springing from the original but tracing its own path. While exhibiting Distillé in Kyoto in 2019, Binion was enveloped in an unfamiliar culture and responded with a fantasy: “If I were to cast an imaginary film, could I find a new Emma Bovary here, in the streets of Kyoto?” The search became an elusive sequence of twenty images at an intimate scale.
“I observe young women in passing and imagine each as Emma Bovary, a role that will always be played out in some way in every culture. The longing that comes with dissatisfaction…These women are fleeting.
—Sandra Binion, Kyoto Journal, July-August 2019
Searching for Emma will be displayed in the ESS garden as 20 wall-mounted dye-sublimation prints by DOCUMENT with an accompanying sound work composed by Lou Mallozzi.
Experimental Sound Studio (ESS)
5925 N. Ravenswood Avenue
Chicago, IL 60660